What is your conversion rate of app store traffic to downloads? If traffic is high but you aren’t getting that many downloads, you may need to optimise your description/screenshots to push conversions.

You may find in your analysis that you get more downloads from paid acquisition campaigns, but your users who found you through organic means are higher life time value customers.

2. ENGAGEMENT METRICS

What’s the point?

They show if your users are getting value from your app (and if you’re getting value from them)

What you can find out

Average session time. This will give you insights to unlock greater revenue potential. For example, if your funnel takes 5 minutes to complete and the average session time is 4 minutes, you either need to make the funnel shorter or optimise certain steps to push customers further down.

Sessions by key demographics (country, age, device, etc). Are there any common characteristics of high-engagement users? Perhaps you can re-position your branding to target more people who fall in high-value demographics.

Frequency of app launches and session intervals between launches. When you know the typical time lapse between app launches, you can better time your prompts (push notifications, in-app messages and more) to encourage regular opens.

Main takeaways from engagement metrics

The real value in app engagement metrics is they reveal the characteristics of your most engaged users who are opening your app frequently, for long sessions and are completing the actions you want them to.

What are these users doing differently to everyone else that they’re getting so much value from your app?

Perhaps they’re all following a similar screen flow, or they’re making more purchases, or they’re inviting friends to join.

By identifying what drives their high level engagement, you can identify what strategies will be most effective at replicating their behavior in your disengaged users.

3. BEHAVIOUR METRICS

What’s the point?

Shows what people are actually doing in your app

What you can find out

What screens they spend the most and least time on, what buttons they’re clicking on, what features they’re not using. This is where you’ll gain insights for improving user experience in future app updates.

What % of people completed a desired event or action? For example, if your app has an in-app referral program, how many people actually complete the action and refer a friend when prompted?

Wrapping up

The trick is not to get bogged down in analysis paralysis over thousands of numbers that don’t 1) Uncover new insights or 2) Drive future action.

Those are really the 2 main purposes of monitoring app analytics.

If you identify those metrics that are actually important for your app, monitor them as you make changes to app functioning and marketing, and optimise accordingly, you’ll see phenomenal growth in your app.

Logan Merrick is the co-founder and Director of Buzinga, as well as one of Australia's most recognised entrepreneurs, keynote speakers, investors and mentors. His writing on startups, technology and mobile marketing has been featured in The Australian, Business Insider, Startup Smart, Smart Company, and more.